Glasses

Cisco’s CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert) is an advanced-level certification for IT professionals who have the training, experience and confidence to tackle the most challenging problems in their field. The CCIE thus certifies an individual's networking skills at the expert level.

Holding an advanced-level Cisco certification, such as a CCNP (Cisco Certified Network Professional), CCDP (Cisco Certified Design Professional), CCIP (Cisco Certified Internetwork Professional), or CCSP (Cisco Certified Security Professional) would be desirable before taking on the CCIE. However, the key to success is extensive hands-on experience.

The CCIE was established in the 1993 and is the top level in Cisco Career Certifications. There are four tracks to the CCIE designations:
CCIE Service Provider
CCIE Routing and Switching
CCIE Security
CCIE Voice
Each of these requires the candidate to pass both a written qualifying exam and a hands-on lab exam demonstrating the candidate's expertise in configuring, testing and troubleshooting real equipment. In terms of recertificatio, “CCIEs are required to pass one CCIE written exam within the 24 month period immediately preceding their current recertification deadline. Exams passed outside this 24 month period will not count towards their recert requirement. If an exam is not passed within this period, a CCIE is put into suspended status. Note that as of June 15th 2003, the CCIE program discontinued the use of specific recertification exams, and instead will allow a passing grade on any of the currently available CCIE written exams to satisfy the requirement for recertification.

Job roles of those pursuing this certification include: network architect, network engineer, infrastructure engineer, and infrastructure specialist.